JOCKEY KRIGGER COULD MAKE DERBY HISTORY
JOCKEY LOOKING FOR A PIECE OF HISTORY

Aboard Goldencents, Krigger bids to become first black rider victorious in Derby since 1902

LOUISVILLE, Ky. 
Ask any trainers on the backstretch of a Southern California racetrack, and they’ll tell you jockey Kevin Krigger is not shy about trying to hustle a mount and get business.

Trainer Doug O’Neill tells the story of how, after getting pitched often, he gave Krigger a break last year by letting him work one of his talented 2-year-old colts, Goldencents, in the mornings. Krigger had come highly recommended by jockey agent Tom Knust, who once booked mounts for Patrick Valenzuela and Kent Desormeaux and discovered Krigger at Golden Gate, where he finished second in the jockey standings in 2011.

“The first time Kevin worked Goldencents,” said O’Neill, “maybe six weeks or so before his debut, and he got off him, and in his best Virgin Islands accent just said, ‘Wow, mon, this horse can really run.’ ”

At that point, O’Neill told Krigger that if he wanted to be Goldencents’ regular rider, he needed to start pitching the owners of Goldencents. O’Neill felt Krigger, with his Island ways, dedication to his family (fiancée Taisha Mintas and four children, ages 2 to 11), his confident manner and willingness to work hard would fit in well with Team O’Neill.

“They fell in love with him right away,” O’Neill said of the Goldencents owners. “But no matter how much you love a person, they’ve got to have some chemistry with the horse, and thank God, not only is Kevin a great person, a great rider, but he’s got great chemistry with Goldencents.”

Knust said this is the break his rider needed.

“Kevin has always had the talent, but he just needed to get his name out there,” Knust said. “A horse like Goldencents will get his name out there. We’re just very appreciative of the opportunity Doug and the owners gave Kevin, and the fact they stayed with him says a lot about them.”

If Krigger, from St. Croix, wins Saturday’s 139th running of the Kentucky Derby, he will be the first African-American rider since Hall of Fame jockey Jimmy Winkfield won the second of two straight Kentucky Derbys in 1902 aboard Alan-a-Dale. Krigger was the first-ever black jockey to win the Santa Anita Derby in 76 runnings on April 6.

“The first Kentucky Derby I remember watching was the one Silver Charm won,” Krigger said when he arrived at Churchill Downs this week. “I got a saddle and put it on the arm of our couch in our living room, and I watched the Derby and rode it, too. I sat on that couch and rode it, and I’ve been riding it in my mind every year since. Now I get to ride it for real.”

Krigger is well aware of the history of black jockeys in the Kentucky Derby.

“I was fortunate enough when I started to ride in Southern California I was given a present from a friend, and it was ‘The History of Black Jockeys,’ ” Krigger said. “The first jockeys were slaves, and to be a free African-American right now ... we’re decades beyond those times, it’s a totally different time.”

Out of the 1,000 or so jockeys riding thoroughbreds in the U.S., only 50 of them are African-American, according to the Jockeys’ Guild.

“I think the reason is there aren’t many African-Americans interested in riding horses,” Krigger said. “And it’s really hard to get into the Kentucky Derby for any jockey, whether you’re African-American, Hispanic, white ... it doesn’t matter what race or color you are. There are 20 horses. It’s not a race that is meant for everyone. Usually, only the top riders get in.”

Krigger has a picture of Winkfield in his locker. He knows Marlon St. Julien (suspended earlier this year and forced into drug rehabilitation) was the last black jockey to ride in the Derby, and that was in 2000. He finished seventh on 50-1 Curule. He was the first black jockey to ride in the Derby since 1921.

Black jockeys once dominated the Derby. In the first Derby, 13 of the 15 riders were black, including winner Oliver Lewis aboard Aristides. Blacks won eight of the first 16 Derbys, 15 of the first 28 runnings. But racism and Jim Crow laws ran blacks out of the game until the Civil Rights Movement ended segregation in the 1960s.

After Krigger won aboard Goldencents for the second time in the Sham Stakes on Jan. 5 at Santa Anita, O’Neill said: “Kevin is a great rider, and he’s as one with the horse. It’s beautiful.”

Krigger has won four times on Goldencents from six starts and has been the only jockey the son of Into Mischief has had. He even survived the fourth-place finish in the San Felipe when jockey Julien Leparoux and Flashback hooked Goldencents into a speed duel. Trainer Bob Baffert replaced Leparoux on Flashback (now injured and off the Derby trail), but O’Neill stayed loyal to Krigger. Instead, O’Neill changed the way he was training Goldencents, reducing what he was asking from the horse in the mornings to give him more energy and stamina in races. It worked in the Santa Anita Derby.

So now, a year after Team O’Neill used an unknown jockey in Mario Gutierrez to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness aboard I’ll Have Another, they’ve entrusted their 3-year-old colt, Goldencents, to another relatively unknown jockey. Like Gutierrez, the 29-year-old Krigger has no Triple Crown experience. But on Saturday, he’ll go to post aboard what will be Southern California’s only hope in the 139th running of the Run for the Roses.

Gutierrez was the 26th jockey to win the Kentucky Derby on his first try. Krigger will try to be the 27th.

It is heady stuff for a jockey who learned to ride on bush tracks in the Virgin Islands before coming to the United States and serving as an apprentice at Thistledown in Ohio and Mountaineer Park in West Virginia. He survived a terrible spill in 2007 at Turfway Park in Florence, Ky., when he broke three vertebrae in his neck. He struggled to come back from the injury, winning just 11 times from 187 starts in 2008 and 2009. He credits neck surgery in the summer of 2010 for saving his riding career.

In 2011, Krigger had a career-best 165 wins totaling $2.8 million. Last year, he fell off to 73 wins, but thanks to a second in the Grade I Champagne Stakes to Shanghai Bobby at Belmont and the huge win in the $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot, he totaled a career-high $3.6 million in earnings. Going into this week, Krigger has won 937 races in his career from 6,700 starts, with career earnings of $17.8 million.

At the recently completed Santa Anita meeting, Krigger finished 10th in the jockey standings, winning 25 races (15 percent) from 172 starts for earnings totaling $1.3 million. He seems to have settled into the top 10 among riders in the West Coast colony, but still far behind riders such as Rafael Bejarano, Joe Talamo and Garrett Gomez.

Krigger has the names of all four of his children on his red leather saddle. One of them, Kevin Jr., 6, took the microphone from his father at the Santa Anita Derby news conference and proclaimed, “We’re going to the Kentucky Derby.”

“It gave me chills to hear him say that,” Krigger said. “I said the same thing to my mother when I was about that age.”